Every time a new node is installed in a network, an operator conventionally determines an upper node or neighboring base stations to be connected to the new node and manually configures settings. However, manual installation of the new node by the operator is not desirable because of complicated procedures and high costs.
For this reason, a network configuration technology is needed for establishing logical connections (logical interfaces) between the new node and neighboring base stations and between the new node and the upper node (communication management apparatus) by means of autonomous operations by the new node after the new node is installed with minimum efforts.
In order to achieve such a network configuration technology, guidelines for a radio access network are proposed, where logical connections are autonomously established when a plug-and-play (PnP) radio station is cable-connected to the network (see “Standardization policy for plug and play RAN”, R2-061929, 3GPP TSG RAN WG2 Ad Hoc on LTE, 27-30 Jun. 2006, Cannes, France, for example). According to the proposed guidelines, when the PnP radio base station (eNB) is powered on, the eNB establishes an initial connection to an OAM (Operation, Administration and Maintenance) server using the dynamically-provided own IP address, the gateway address, and the DNS server address. Then, the eNB receives necessary information for participating in the network from the OAM server. Then, the eNB automatically connects to an optimum upper node (MME/UPE: Mobile Management Entity/User Plane Entity). After the end of basic setup procedures in this manner, radio parameters are configured.